


I'm Scared Too: Act Three

by UnapologeticallyMeatwad



Series: I'm Scared Too [3]
Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Climate Change, Everyone Is Gay, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, LGBTQ Themes, Mental Health Issues, Trans Female Character, Trans Kim Possible, or trans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26030446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnapologeticallyMeatwad/pseuds/UnapologeticallyMeatwad
Summary: Kim has all the power in the world. She can do as she pleases - but her own ideals hold her back. Committed to nonviolent direct action to save the planet, it's actually the worst time to have godlike abilities. Despite everything, she feels as helpless as ever.
Relationships: "Big Daddy" Brotherson/Hank Perkins, Kim Possible/Yori
Series: I'm Scared Too [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1412980
Kudos: 2





	1. I'm Still Not Sure Why People Pray

Kim doesn’t feel good. 

It doesn’t make sense; she successfully escaped the mental hospital and killed the one person who was a problem for her… she even has medications she likes.

She should be getting better. 

**An Alleyway: Boston, Massachusetts** **  
** **September 5, 2008: 11:48PM**

Granted, Kim also has no money. Nor is she safe wandering the streets like this. After spending a day scavenging for food and finding very little, she returns to her alley. She doesn’t even make it all the way to the mattress she found on a sidestreet in Jamaica Plains. Grunting, Kim doesn’t make it all the way to her bed. She slings her phone across the cardboard box overhanging her bed, and collapses to the ground, rolling against the dirty, wet stone. 

She’s exhausted, covered in sweat even though it’s cold out. She’s probably stressed, or like, about to have a mental fucking breakdown or something.

Opening her eyes, chest heaving, Kim sees her phone looming above her like an eclipse. Gritting her teeth, she elbows the cardboard box really hard and it wobbles. The phone shifts and the eclipse moves, covering more of the light above her. Eyes barely open, Kim hits the box again — this time it hurts her elbow a lot — but she hits it hard enough that the phone finally drops down to her chest.

Kim lifts it up and looks at it, thumb hanging over the keypad. There’s a lot of people she could call right now… like Yori, or Rhino, or… but she doesn’t want to call them.

Kim can’t talk to them. They must know she is still alive, based on the intel coming from Global Justice right now. Unless folks think that the massive blue explosion that took out Betty Director and half the mental hospital was Ron, but she bets her guys know better. She bets they know Ron lost his powers because they got exchanged over to Kim.

Kim wants her crew to think that she’s okay, believe she’s getting better and will be back to them soon. But if she calls them sobbing uncontrollably because she still wants to die…

She feels it in her chest, this horrible black energy. It swirls around her heart, and makes her feel so sick, like she’s going to vomit. Any second it might crack and spew from her mouth, making her become that wretched demon that clawed its way across the beach in Wonderland.

Without consciously thinking, Kim raises her left arm, peeling back the sleeve to her hoodie until her wrist is exposed. The bandages are so thick, it’s a wonder they don’t drag along with the tight clothing she wears. Carefully, she peels back the bandage and sees the matrix of thin white scars, and Kim imagines the sharp objects in the nearby dumpster. She could so easily cut again.

It’s so easy now for Kim to find sharps and run them through her body, gliding into flesh and….

...bad, Kim is bad. So cruel to herself, this is why everyone should hate her, this is why she should disappear.

Kim raises her hand up until it blocks the shining white moon from her vision. Another eclipse. Everything fades to an off-black, Kim imagines it streaming from her wrist, slipping down the arm, and falling onto her face…

Her hands clutch her sides as the pain overcomes her, tearing her body from the inside out..

Kim tries to blink away the hot tears that blur her vision and irritate her skin. Hand shaking, she claws at the phone on her chest. She needs _ him _ so badly right now. She tries to remember his number. She mashes the buttons fast, but with each click a knife rips from the floor and it digs into her body.

It burns, she needs to move faster. Each click a new knife. Kim tries to escape, tries to drag herself across the floor away from them but more and more burst from the floor and catch her, holding her back and stabbing into her skin.

It’s not real, Kim, it’s just made up, you’re not well, it’s okay, try to focus on… she finishes the number and brings the phone to her ear.

_ "Hey, dummies, Doctor D is not in,” _ it’s Shego’s voice.

Kim represses a scream, she stuffs her fist into her mouth and bites down on it, body crumpling into a fetal position.

The rest of the voicemail continues, _ “Probably off baking cupcakes or planning some other dumb, wacked out scheme. Drak also doesn't know how to access his voicemail, so don't bother with a voicemail. 'Kay? _ "

Beep.

Kim bites her lip, wiping away tears with the whole of her hand. Still, knives tear through the alleyway’s floor and jab right into her. Like a nerve snapping in her arm. 

“Where the fuck are you?” Kim whimpers, trying to keep the grief out of her voice but it’s nigh impossible. “I’m homeless, I’m not okay.” She pauses and decides to explain herslef, “I’m sick. A-and… well, Ron attacked my parents so I had to move them so I placed them near you… in Vegas. I’m going to them.”

Kim rubs her cheek against the ground. “You’re in Vegas too. I met you out here last year… remember that?” Kim tries to relax her shoulders. This is probably the same relief she’d get from calling the suicidie hotline, granted that would be much healthier for her to do. “I’m coming home and I want to see you when I get there.

“I need your help, please,” Kim sighs, already regretting her words. Drakken is a fucking dumbass, Kim doubts he would even be able to make sense of her master plan. “I’m too sick to take over the world right now and… I don’t know, I don’t know if you even check these but please just fucking call me back, okay?”

Kim’s finger goes to the hang up button but she freezes and thinks about it; that’s mean,  _ just fucking call me back, okay? _ Why is she so mean to people? Why is she so awful?

Her wrist goes limp and the phone clatters against the ground. Groaning, she reaches over, the phone still recording, and finally shuts it off. For some reason, that stretch drains the last of her strength and she lays against the floor. 

Getting up would be too much, she can’t do it, can’t will herself to go to the bed. Besides, she doesn’t deserve the bed anyways. So she does her best to get comfortable and goes to sleep.

“This is so fucked up,” is the last thing she says to herself.

* * *

Doctor Betty Director is dead.

Ron Stoppable is on the loose  — without powers.

Kim Possible has successfully jacked his powers even though she doesn’t want them. 

Global Justice has fallen.

Boston is moving into full-on dystopia mode  — which is maybe fair since a major political figure was murdered here by an alleged God.

It is terrifying living on the streets in Boston. Local Boston agents from Global Justice are everywhere, and they are packin’. Thankfully, none of them seem to know what the new Kim Possible really looks like… but she’s already had a few close calls.

**Downtown Crossing: Boston Massachusetts** **  
** **September 7, 2008: 8:11am**

It's been three days of wandering. All Kim needs to do is hitch a train somewhere, but with local Global Justice agents hitting the streets, and also checking and scanning every ID crossing over onto the train, it just seems so risky.

Money is another problem. Kim comes into South Station late one night so she can buy one way tickets but buying a ticket doesn’t work if you don't have enough money.

Kim hates the idea of stealing but she doesn't have much of a choice. She at least starts with selling off her stupid smartphone; she is positive that at some point some Global Justice stooge is going to remember that they gave Kim some kind of phone  — and can most likely use that to track her. Kim turns the GPS off (obviously) because of that, but she is sure there are other trackings installed that she can't get rid of.

Hence why Kim goes to Alewife to sell the phone; she jumps the TAP card barrier a minute before the T is supposed to arrive, and squeezes herself into one of the carts, the doors sliding shut before the stupid cops can chase her in. People cheer for her.

Kim is lucky enough to find loose change here and there, and she uses it to buy fruit from this guy with a mini-outdoor market near Downtown Crossing. She mostly buys oranges, and she buys them one at a time throughout the day.

Occasionally, student film crews gather on the Boston Common to shoot stupid shit. Their productions are really janky and in Kim's honest opinion, poorly imagined and in dire need of real creativity.

She only knows this because Kim likes to wait until they start rolling the camera to sneak over to their 'crafty' table to steal snack food and most importantly, coffee.

Sometimes the rich kids catch her and yell at her; they think they hate her because she is stealing their food, but in actuality they hate her because as the kin of upperclassmen motherfuckers, they have been raised to hate people like Kim who are poor and homeless.

Eventually, Kim gets kinda desperate and in the pouring rain goes to MIT. Through her experiences on Reddit via the Boston Public Library, Kim learns that a great place to find money is rich kid school campuses.

Water weighing down all of her clothing and plastering her hair against her forehead, she wanders through the campus like a ghost and eventually finds something.

As she learned from her first venture at MIT, the school is built above a complex series of tunnels. Above those tunnels are grates and some of those grates run through the actual pavement. If you look through them, you can see the gray and white tunnels, some of them  _ still _ singed by ash from the fires Ron accidentally started.

More importantly, through one of the grates Kim sees a crinkled white envelope. Soaking wet as it might be, the paper isn't yet translucent so it's not clear if it even has money in it. But Kim is desperate.

Kim snaps a branch off a nearby tree and jabs it into the grate. It's just long enough that it can actually reach the envelope if Kim jams her fist all the way against the rusted grate. She stabs the envelope in the center and drags it over the second level of grating, but occasionally loses her traction.

So Kim stabs and stabs again, trying over and over to run the stick against the wall. She keeps slipping, and the envelope keeps tumbling back down. She gets mad and stabs it so hard that the branch breaks in two and she has to toss it and get a new one.

Thankfully, the students strolling by ignore her. Though given all the rainfall, she really would appreciate if a student gave her an umbrella since, y'know, it is easy enough for them to buy a new one.

Eventually, Kim gets the envelope up the wall and to the corner of the grate. Carefully, keeping her hold on the stick steady, Kim shimmies down the length of the stick, edging herself closer and closer to the corner where she can eventually grab at the envelope.

But she drops it. She swears under her breath and tries again, stabbing at the envelope from directly above it, so as to avoid the shimmy. But that doesn't give the stick enough physics so she has to back off a few feet.

Finally, after a half hour of working this, she gets the wet envelope into her hands. She rips it open easily and almost tears in half the twenty dollar bill inside.

Kim stuffs the twenty into her pocket, squealing in delight, hopping up and down on the balls of her feet. Twenty dollars! Just enough to buy her a train ticket, but not enough to also buy herself food or even a T-ride over to South Station. Which sucks because she is so close to the Red Line for once.

(In Boston, there are many different colored train lines but you always end up just taking the Green Line anyways.)

On her way back to Boston (MIT is in Cambridge which is technically a different city or whatever) Kim walks across the bridge she walked across with Ron way back when. She remembers the awkward silence as her heart pounded after the botched MIT mission.

From here, past the Charles River, she can see the bench she sat on where she broke up with him.

That sucked by the way. It was a whole conversation and it felt like he wasn't even paying attention to her. Granted, she wasn't paying attention to him either. They both sucked at this.

Kim pointedly tries not to look at that bench when she crosses by it.

...

Chin up, Kim. South Station is only a (half hour) away. Hang in there and you'll be on a train to Philly or... something, soon enough.

Granted, the city is still in lockdown and she could easily get snagged by the police after all that.

(It's just normal police now. Global Justice is essentially defunct, they don't have enough presence to station agents out in Boston anymore.)

* * *

“ID?” a police officer drawls, eyes focused anywhere else but on Kim. 

Kim’s pretty sure she smells bad or something.

**South Station: Boston, Massachusetts** **  
** **September 11, 2008: 4:24PM**

Still though, the officer could still  _ look  _ at her. It’s not like she’s  _ that  _ offensive. Fuck, even if she  _ were  _ offensive, this dude should still have to deal with her.

She is so annoyed she doesn’t even think about the ID that she pulls from her jacket. The ID that has an M where an F should be, and a different, disgusting name that she hasn’t even said out loud yet. Fuckers.

The officer pinches it between his fingers, twirls it past his eyes and…

...gives it back to Kim. He waves her towards the train. Kim tries to play it cool and not look like she’s highkey freaking out, and shuffles aboard; she really didn’t expect to make it.

So now she’s on her way to Philadelphia all of a sudden. She has no plan in mind on how to handle that or what to even do, but… she’ll figure it out. She made Boston somehow work out after all.

Kim checks her shoulder before she boards. Maybe it’s a trap, maybe the cop is going to call in goons to take her off the train since the government knows no one person can take out Kim Possible. But nothing of consequence happens the whole way down. Except the conductor getting snooty with her for smelling bad.

Kim wonders how many people really know what happened between her and Betty.

* * *

Out in Philadelphia, Kim buys herself a burner. She knows it’s wrong for her to keep pretending she can’t talk to anyone when she’s very much alive.

She cradles the thing in her hands, sitting on the curb outside a 7/11. It’s pretty exciting. She just doesn’t know if she’s ready.

**7/11: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania** **  
** **September 12, 2008: 11:43PM**

Compulsively, Kim types in Yori’s phone number and sends them a text. Kim winces immediately after sending.

_ Hi. its me. Im okay. _

Ugh, God. That sounds so stupid. Yori’s going to have so many questions and  —

— speak of the Devil, Yori calls Kim right away.

Kim stares at the phone wide eyed, really truly not ready to talk to her. Really truly too  _ scared _ to talk to her. But she needs to  _ try _ **_._ ** So Kim picks up.

Yori’s already crying. It makes Kim cry too. Homeless and poor and dirty. The dirt on her face smears with tears, all under the shitty neon light of a 7/11. “ _ What the fuck, Kim!? _ ”

“I’m sorry,” Kim tries to say, her lips flub together and it makes it hard to talk. Her jaw seizes with pressure and she plants her hand over her mouth in that pain. 

Kim tells Yori everything. From the Osceola to Wonderland to the whole stint with the fake Shego… the hospital, Corey, Stephanie, oh God  _ Stephanie _ and eventually…

“...it was an accident,” Kim’s teeth chatter. “She surprised me and… I tried to stop it, tried to stop the bullets with Ron’s power but… I was too slow and…”

“ _ It’s okay, you’re okay, _ ” Yori coos, her emotions quickly steeling to be a safety net for Kim. “ _ I’m really happy you’re actually alive. We weren’t sure. _ ”

“Thanks,” Kim sniffles. “You didn’t do anything stupid, did you?”

“ _ Uh, there… might have been a couple of hits on GJ, yeah, _ ” Yori sighs. “ _ But no one died. I’m okay, Rhino’s okay, Nong Man’s been kinda quiet… Hank and Big Daddy definitely miss you. So do Mugsy and Vinny, I didn’t realize you were so close with everyone… um, sorry. I’m talking too much, right? _ ”

“N-no,” Kim stutters. “It’s really nice hearing you talk again. I miss you so much.”

Kim can hear Yori smile on the other end. “ _ Same. They didn’t hurt you, did they?” _

Kim groans and draws her knees to her chest. “I feel sadder.”

“ _ Oh _ .”

“Yeah. I figured out that they were Moodulating me to keep me unstable.”

“ _ Was it like… a Global Justice hospital?” _

“No, a regular mental hospital,” Kim sucks on her teeth for a moment. She doesn’t want to admit the truth, really doesn’t want to admit but she can’t run anymore. “I checked myself in. I let it happen.”

“ _ Wow _ ,” Yori blurts out immediately. “ _ Well, um, I’m happy you took initiative, that’s cool at least… I wish you told us, but…” _

“I know, I’m sorry,” Kim says quickly. “I don’t think I had much of a choice there. I guess… I guess I could have ran but I didn’t want to, like, hurt you all over again, I want to be strong.”

Kim can feel Yori nodding wherever she is. Kim thinks Yori is probably living with Rhino still, there wasn’t really a reason for that arrangement to split.

“ _ Now what? _ ” Yori asks.

Kim nods, not really sure what the answer is. “I’m in Philadelphia.”

“ _...yeah?” _

“Mhm, I landed here today, I had to like, dig an envelope of cash out of a storm drain in Boston to get a train out.”

“ _ Kim… _ ”

“I’m pretty hungry,” Kim says. Mentally regrouping herself like this is helping a little. “I didn’t fuck up with you, did I?”

_ “No.” _

It doesn’t sound entirely honest to Kim, but she’d rather let it be and keep talking. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to… like, not fulfill my  _ plan  _ with the Bermuda Triangle and everything. It’s important to me, and it needs to be me to do it anyways…” Her hand drapes itself over her knee, just the wrist making contact. “...but I still need help.”

“ _ Mhm _ .”

“...I might stop at my parents’ place. They’re… out in Nevada, so not that far out from you and… Yori, I love you.”

Yori rasps back,  _ “I know _ .”

Oof. Kim cringes, and gets up, brushing herself off. “I should get going. I need to find some food for tonight. I spent all my money getting this phone to talk to you and…”

_ “Do you want one of us to come get you? _ ” 

Kim considers it. “No, I need to do this myself. Besides, there’s not really a point in getting me…”

“... _ beyond wanting to be with you? _ ”

“Well, like, practically,” Kim’s cheeks go red. “I’m safe. I’m not going to hurt myself, and no one’s chasing me.”

“... _ uh, Kim? Pretty sure some folks want Kim Possible dead. _ ”

Kim smiles and runs a hand through her scruff. “But they don’t know what trans Kim Possible looks like. Like,  _ really _ trans Kim Possible. Betty made a fake identity for me to get into the hospital, and I don’t think anyone else knows about it.”

Kim flinches; she doesn’t want to talk about Betty right now. As much as he hated her, God, that woman really fucked with her head. Just like Shego. Kim needs to let it go and move on.

_ “Oooooh, are you keeping your voice that low on purpose?” _

“Yeah,” Kim sighs in relief.. “Um, anyways, I’m safe. You can tell the others I’m safe, don’t have anyone look for me, I’m going to try to get out of here soon and move on to the next city… but, um, know I love you and stuff, and I’m thinking about you a ton.”

“ _ Okay. Good night, Kim. I’ll text you tomorrow. _ ”

Kim hangs up, and she knows before any of this happened, she wouldn’t have answered… but tonight she did, and as shitty and depraved as she feels internally, it’s okay. Because she’s trying, really trying now, to make all this work.

* * *

Kim walks among normal people. Just like in Boston, she is just trying to survive. The hardest part is getting money for the next train ticket.

It used to be food. Food used to be hard. But Kim gave up on that, and now she is staying at a youth center for trans kids experiencing homelessness. They feed her pretty well.

**Philadelphia Youth Center: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania** **  
** **September 16, 2008: 8:28AM**

The routine is simple; Kim wakes up, eats, ships out and scavenges for money, goes back to eat, scavenges some more, eats at the Center, and reads something she got from the library.

It feels wrong. Kim could just ask for help from her crew; it wouldn’t be a big deal for them. But she doesn’t hit them up. It just feels like… she needs to get healthier before she faces them, and… well, that isn’t happening naturally. She knows she needs to try.

So then it’s like — why is Kim even saving up to go back to San Francisco? 

Well, she’s not. 

Kim is saving up to go to Nevada probably. But she hasn’t even told her rents yet that she’s planning on this, that she’s safe and okay… they might not even know that she is alive. She doesn’t know what her parents are thinking or what they are even doing with their lives.

She feels horrible for fucking everything up for them; there is so much Kim could do to fix all this.

Like maybe Kim could use the powers she jacked from Ron to help save the world forevermore, but Kim doesn’t  _ want _ to use Ron’s powers. She feels them buzz in her chest everyday, daring her limbs to spin into killing formation whenever she gets upset. Just the thought of seeing a blue spark come from her hand makes her want to scream.

Maybe — maybe Kim shouldn’t be focused on getting better. Who knows how long she’ll actually have Ron’s powers for?

Kim wonders if there’s a way to destroy the Mystical Monkey Power. If she could do that, she could protect everyone from Ron — and save Ron from himself, probably. But who is going to know about that? 

“ _ Um, honestly Kim, I don’t know anything about Ron’s stupid powers, _ ” Yori sighs. 

“Dammit,” Kim frowns from her stoop outside the Center. “But Sensei kept possessing you and stuff!”

“ _ With that logic, you should know more than me.” _

“Yeah, you’re right,” Kim sighs. “Can you get Nong Man on the line?”

“ _ Sure  _ — _ HEY NONG MAN!” _

Kim furrows her brow and waits a second. She hears the phone pass into another palm, but she’s confused, why would Nong Man be there? It’s late, unless everyone is working overtime…

“ _ What  _ — _ you don’t have a hang on man vs. hey nong man pun for me? Boo, Kim. Boo _ ,” Nong Man laughs.

Kim blinks. She totally forgot that his name used to be a subject of many jokes.

“ _ It’s ‘kay, my theory is I was given this name with the intention of being a one-off joke in people’s lives, but nope, I’m like, kind of a thing now,”  _ Nong Man says in his classic sage wisdom demeanor. “ _ What’s up Kimmie? Missed ya.” _

“Yeah, me too,” Kim says quickly. “I’m sorry all this happened.”

_ “I don’t know. If I can be honest, I know Yori is mad at you for like, not trying to break out…” _

“I didn’t know that,” Kim says quickly. Dammit, she knew Yori was mad at her.

“ _ Ope, well, there it is!”  _ Nong Man chuckles. “ _ You’ll get through it, babe. Anyways, I on the other hand getchu. If I was fucked in the head, I wouldn’t have risked an escape. Honestly, I think you’re on the right path. Now, do I get why you’re being a lone wolf out in Philly? Tsch, no!” _

Kim rolls her eyes. “I just… I just need to do this, but thanks for getting me at least. Why were you so readily available to Yori, by the way? You’re not… working a shit ton at the Bermuda Triangle lately, are you?”

“ _ Me? Nah, I mean, I’m hardly working. Hank and Big Daddy got me doing these hits and jobs every now and then with the crew, mostly just to keep people occupied so they don’t peace. Honestly though? You fucked me up, Kim. I don’t like those kinda jobs anymore.” _

Something about that makes Kim smile; Nong Man was the guy who introduced himself to her as someone who loves killin’, and now…

“ _ Anyways, I live with Yori and Rhino now.” _

Why, if Kim were drinking something, she’d likely spit take about now. “Why?”

“ _ Lonely, sad, poor, you know how it be _ .”

Kim considers her empty stomach. “Yeah, I know how it be. Hey, do you think Yori is going to break up with me?”

“ _ Christ, Kimmie, you don’t just ask someone that, _ ” Nong Man laughs. “ _ I think you’ll be fine long as you do this mental wellness bullshit you seem to be so into. Though I’d appreciate it if you let us send you some money, at least. Ain’t no point in doing this poverty thing, right?” _

Kim perks up.

“ _ It’s just your standard self-destruction gambit, so please, let me send you some cash and…” _

“Do it,” Kim says with the ferocity of Emperor Palpatine ordering his apprentice to kill someone he’s not a big fan of.

“ _ Hell yeah, I’m on it,” _ Nong Man says. “ _ Now, let’s talk MMP, yeah?” _

“Ew, don’t call it that.”

_ “Fine, Mystical Monkey Powah. I’ve heard you got it now.” _

“The legends are true. I accidentally blew up a building already.”

“ _ Uh, and iced Betty Director? _ ”

Kim frowns. She casts a nervous glance at the Youth Center before getting back up to her feet, and she walks away, towards one of the street lamps in the parking lot. “No, she surprised me and I shot her. I, um, tried to save her but the powers actually weren’t fast enough.”

“ _ Mm, well, you can still smack that into your ledger if you ever want merc work,” _ Nong Man sighs. “ _ Hell, I’ve been paid to kill her before and even  _ **_I_ ** _ fucked it up.” _

“It was an accident.”

“ _ Mm, you’re unhappy about killing her? _ ”

“Well,” Kim bites her lip and thinks about it. It’s confusing. She shot Betty, and while she bled out, Kim beat her senseless. It was probably overkill, like, _ way _ overkill. But Betty was still breathing after, and maybe could have been saved? Kim doesn’t know.

“She shot herself,” Kim says. “She wanted me to finish her and… she got to the gun before me.”

“... _ oh geez _ ,” Nong Man says. Kim knows him well enough to know he’s patting his forehead now, rolling his long fuzzy hair back against his scalp. “ _ Well ha cha cha, okay. Rough life, s’okay. Let’s talk about your Mystical Monkey Problem.” _

Kim leans herself up against a street lamp, looking over to the door where one of the caretakers stares at her. Kim waves at them with a smile and they go back into the building. 

_ “Matter cannot be destroyed, it can only be like — displaced or like rearranged. But it won’t go away.” _

Kim’s not following. “So?”

_ “Listen, I dunno shit about the Mystical Monkey Power, I just got theories, okay? Back at Yamanouchi when I told the others you were right about Stopstop not knowing about your power swip swap, I was making it up, mi’lady. But it was an educated guess at least and well… _

_...my theory right now is that we only abide by the laws of matter because technically, we’re weaker than those laws, so we can’t break them. With the MMP — we ain’t got shit towards killing it because we’re definitely weaker than it. You either need something stronger than the Mystical Monkey Power to kill it — or — you need it to kill itself.” _

“Woof,” Kim says quickly. 

“ _ Woof woof bark,”  _ Nong Man echoes.

“Yeah, I dunno how to do that,” Kim admits, locking her heels together. “So… I guess for right now I just need to make sure Ron doesn’t get these back?”

“ _ I don’t know if you can control that, honey.” _

Kim’s eyes get all droopy; he’s right though. None of them have a say in this, the magic just does its thing and… it is most certainly annoying.

“I should go to bed, or like, get back inside,” Kim sighs, getting up. “Thanks Nong Man, I appreciate you.”

“ _ Sure, just, uh, text me your address so I can get you the money. You’ll need to hang tight out there for just like two more days probably, but we got you, okay?” _

Kim nods. She really doesn’t want help, she really just wants to do this for herself. But… the real problem probably is that she  _ doesn’t _ ask for help. So…

“Okay,” she smiles and lets herself feel it.

* * *

A week passes by and Kim gets the money early in. She gets herself set up on a train and at Rhino’s request — buys herself an iPod.

**Commuter Rail: Rolling Through the United States** **  
** **September 23, 2008: 2:18PM**

Kim leans back into the cushioned chair. No one is sitting near here so it’s okay for her to have a little fun with Rhino. She sings along with the show she’s jamming to. “ _ Thanks for the help and for all you’ve done. Thank you for treating me decently.” _

This is  _ Legally Blonde _ , as in the song  _ Legally Blonde _ from the musical,  _ Legally Blonde _ . It’s the number where Elle Woods gets fired and needs to go back to California, and her heart shatters when she tells Emmet, her soon-to-be lover, that she’s leaving.

Rhino, all the way in San Francisco, stifles a laugh (because this is a serious song) and does his best Christian Borle as Emmet Forrest, “ _ What’s wrong?” _

Kim smiles to herself. God dammit, she loves  _ Legally Blonde _ and she loves how Rhino loves  _ Legally Blonde. _

“ _ Maybe someday you can visit me,”  _ Kim sings softly. “ _ Give me a call, say hello…” _

“ _ Wait _ ,” Rhino says in a talky voice, jumping quickly into a soft tenor, or rather, his imitation of one. (Rhino’s a baritone.) “ _ Where are you going?” _

Kim continues like Elle Woods does, “ _ Sorry I’m letting down everyone.” _

_ “What brought on this?” _

Ugh, Rhino is so heartfelt when he sings.

Kim sings, “ _ You did your best with a hopeless case.” _

_ “That's ludicrous.” _

They sing it together. She goes low, Rhino goes high, and it’s harmony, “ _ You are the best thing about this place. _ ”

Kim immediately gasps and sinks into tears, crumpling up against her chair. “Dammit, Rhino.”

Kim quiets her iPod, she bets Rhino does too, as Laura Bell Bundy and Christian Bortle continue singing. “You picked this song on purpose.”

“ _ Yeah _ ,” Rhino says dimly. “ _ I did pick it on poipoise, sorry if it’s a li’l on the nose for ya. _ ”

“No, it’s fine,” Kim runs a hand through her tears. “Elle never really needed to go, except, she wanted to go and that’s what made her need to go.”

“Y _ eah, good character analysis, _ ” Rhino sighs. “ _ I t’ink you gotta do the same thing, yeah _ ?”

“Yeah,” Kim says, completely pausing her iPod now. This is a much more serious conversation than she anticipated. God, she feels so lonely. Hopefully, it won’t be like this for too much longer. “I’m going to my parents.”

“ _ Yeah, we all kinda figured _ ,” Rhino admits. “H _ onestly, if you showed up at our doohstep, I was probs gonna drive you over to dem. _ ”

Kim laughs under her breath, her lips crinkling together. “Thanks, Rhino.”

“ _ NP, KP, _ ” he says. “ _ S’okay, we can still hang out and do stuff like this even though youze gonna be hangin’ wit’ da rents _ .”

Kim smiles and nods quickly. “Yeah, yeah! Hopefully it won’t be too long, you know, I just need to make sure I’m not going to hurt you guys anymore.”

Rhino doesn’t say anything for a second, and she’s sure that it’s because she did hurt Rhino real bad by jumping into the ocean like that. “ _ Yeah, _ ” he says. “ _ But… eh, I trust you, and we’ll be here for ya and stuff. ‘Ey, let’s listen to a different show, I tink it’ll be better if we listen to Legally Blonde Remix after youze get better and… I wanna show you The Producers. _ ”

“Oh,” Kim sighs, laughing to herself. “Rhino, I already know  _ The Producers!” _

“ _ You  _ _ — you listened to it already? _ ”

“Yeah, of course.”

“ _ Wooooow, _ ” Rhino squeals. “ _ Look at me! Ol’ Rhino inspirin’ people to listen to musicals, aw man, that’s so good _ !”

“I think you mean,” Kim takes in a deep breath and throws on her best Nathan Lane, “ _ Who do you have to FUCK to get a break in this stinkin’ town!?” _

A couple heads way at the end of the cart turn back at her, like,  _ da fuck? _

Kim cringes and waves over to them, leaning in closer to her phone’s speaker. “That was a little reference for you.”

“ _ Y’know, I picked up on that, ‘ey, have you listened to Curtains yet _ ?”

“With David Hyde Pierce? No, I haven’t.”

“ _ Rightyo — less do it.” _

* * *

Days later and with even more knowledge of musicals than ever, Kim appears on her parents’ doorstep again. Tentatively, she knocks. 

The door creaks open.

**Kim’s Parent’s House (Relocated): Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **September 24, 2008: 9:42AM**

Both her parents wait inside the living room, staring at her. Even though she looks like Hell, covered in sweat and days old dirt, and her clothes are something she’d never actually wear, and well, she could really use a shave and — point is, her parents know it's her. They always do.

Kim’s dad takes her in gently, guiding her by the shoulders. Mom rushes off to get her water or something probably. Kim eyes the new home warily, it’s… nice. Just different.

Dad seats her on a couch and sits across her with folded hands.

Kim looks him in the eye, “Last time, you told me you wanted me to stay with you and I didn’t do it. I’m sorry for that, and I’m sorry about… everything else.” She’s felt enough in the past few months that it’s easier for her to not cry on queue when talking about the suicide attempt. 

Her dad’s eyes water though, and  _ that _ makes it hard for her to keep her cool. 

“Can I stay this time?” Kim asks, voicing kicking a notch up in pitch.

Mom pats Kim on the back from behind, handing her a glass of water and elegantly pivoting in place to land besides her father. They both smile at her. Kim smiles back.

She’s going to really try to make all of this work together. It’s the only way.


	2. My Thirst Grows Every Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: suicide ideation

There is a structure to how canvassing works. You knock on the door. If they don’t come out, you knock once more with feeling. When they do come out, you use active listening skills to hook your contact. You pitch them on whatever it is you’re canvassing for and then you ask your contact to take action.

If it doesn’t work and they say no, that’s fine, that’s normal. You try again, you pushback three times and if it doesn’t work then, you walk.

That’s the process. But it doesn’t matter when you can’t get anyone to talk to you.

**Las Vegas Suburbs: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 3, 2008: 11:53AM**

No one slams their door on Kim, but a lot of people do pretend to be on conference calls or whatever; they don’t talk to her. It’s really frustrating. 

It’s awkward once again canvassing for the Chris Giunchiligiani campaign, given that she was once their celebrity endorsement and now she’s just a trans kid with  _ serious  _ issues. It’s also stressful; the election is in one month and one day, so a lot is expected from the canvassers and Kim is not capable of doing  _ a lot _ right now. 

Kim hits the curb, pacing back and forth in her jeans and Chris G t-shirt. “Come on, pick up, pick up…” she mutters.

_ Click _ .

“Coach, I need help,” Kim says, her voice crackly and dry.

Her coach sighs, as if he had just swallowed his own spit. “ _ Kim, honey, it’s cute that you’re canvassing again, but as your Big Time Villainy Consultant, I don’t think my time would be…” _

“But you were a great canvassing coach,” Kim whines. “My new boss is a misogynist. He acts like it’s so easy, but it’s just because he’s some entitled cishet white piece of garbage that this is easy for him.”

“ _ Yeah, yeah _ ,” Hank snaps back after some noticeable hesitation. “ _ Fine, let’s do a role play _ .”

Kim cringes. “Ew, no.”

“ _ How am I supposed to help you if I don’t even know what you’re doing at the door? C’mon. Knock on my door.” _

Kim frowns and looks down the street. The other canvassers are cutting through their turf way faster than her, and she’s over here dragging her feet. “Knock knock…” she mutters. 

“ _ Um, hello?” _ Hank asks, mimicking the classic contact opening line.

“Hi, I’m with the Chris G campaign, I’m Miriam — ”

“ _ Gross.” _

Kim blinks. “What — already?”

_ “Horrible opener — you sound so dry and unenthused, like you’re only here because you’re getting paid. _ ”

“Um… w-well, I  _ did _ just try to kill myself a few months ago…”

_ “But do they need to know that? No, you’re killing the mood. No one is going to talk to you. Incidentally, ‘Miriam?’ You chose a name that’s nickname rhymes with Kim?” _

Kim frowns. “I didn’t think it through.”

_ “Woof, Kim.  _ **_Woof_ ** _.” _

For some reason, that makes Kim feel really sad. She thinks about it. “Hey, is ‘woof’ like the new thing? Nong Man said it to me on the phone the other day and…”

_ “Kim… _ ”

“Sorry, I just miss you guys.”

Kim hears Hank’s breath hitch in his throat before he returns back to her. “ _ Right back at you. Hey, uh, give it a whirl. Try to brighten up a bit, make a joke here and there, you’re very funny and very charming when you want to be… don’t think about the other doors and…” _

“Got it.”

…

Kim takes in a deep breath, waiting for the door open. She spaces out, she tries not thinking about what happened before, but when she stops thinking about the past, all she can think about is what is she going to do  _ next _ , like when she gets home.

Then the door opens and it’s just some guy. Staring at her. Like she should be performing for him.

Kim frowns and out of desperates, gives him finger guns. “Hey maaaaaaaaaan.”

The man groans. “Listen, I don’t want to do this today. I’m voting for Chris G, okay? See ya.” He shuts the door. 

Technically, that’s a checkmark for Kim that she can use to keep her job, but it’s not really what she wanted.

…

Kim is shaking, her teeth grinding against her lip. Dude slammed his door on her, people are so  _ mean! _

She starts twitching. Her hand goes into her hair, messing it all up, and she knows she looks stupid so she throws her hands to her sides and cuts across the person’s lawn at a diagonal instead of taking the little walkway all the way back to the curb. She cleaves across the next person’s lawn too, walking very purposefully. It saves her maybe thirty seconds of pointless walking.

Kim knocks on the door.

“Fuck you, don’t walk on my lawn you little shit,” some old hag screeches between her blinds.

Kim growls and cuts through the next lawn anyways. There’s got to be someone — anyone — who will want to talk to her.

...

“Hey, I like your mustard flavored door, is that Dijon— wait don’t— fuck.”

Kim sighs, fingers twitching in rapidly, bent at sharp enough angles that they could be mistaken for talons. She raises her phone to her ear. “That was funny, wasn’t it?”

“ _ Kim, the ethics of me listening in on your calls is murky at best, you’re supposed to tell people you’re recording them at a bare minimum?” _

Kim pinches the bridge of her nose; she doesn’t have time for this today. 

“Was. It. Funny.”

Hank considers that. “ _ It was a start. _ ”

…

“No soliciting!” some stupid piece of shit yells at her. 

“I’m not asking for money,” Kim says quickly.

“You’re going to!”

“I’m not!” Kim says, getting a little mad. They try to shut the door on her and she grabs the door and drags it back open. “We’re doing this.”

The old man blinks in sheer terror, his eyes misty like he just might cry. Not good. He will probably call management and get Kim fired for being a fucking cunt. But for whatever reason, he starts laughing.

Kim hesitates. “What’s so funny?”

“I haven’t been yelled at by a kid in a long time,” the old man wipes a tear from his saggy cheek. “I can’t help you anyways; I’m too old. I don’t vote anymore.”

Kim furrows her brow. “Oh, you’re voting?”

He raises an eyebrow.

Kim thinks for a second; she  _ could _ do the normal, advised pitch that’s pre-written. That could work but no… no this person feels  _ special _ . Right? They’re special, they don’t need a normal pitch, they don’t need normal pushback, they need… something, something wild and improvised, something she’ll probably never say again.

Kim feels a fire in her chest, and it’s exciting. She remembers this and her eyes light up with such bliss. 

And then Kim talks for twenty minutes and in the most aggressive pitch of her canvassing career, she still manages to get the guy’s pledge to vote.

…

“Got ‘im,” Kim says smugly from her spot on the curb.

“ _ Mhm, from your recounting, that took twenty minutes, right?” _

“Mhm,” Kim takes a bite from her sandwich. 

“ _ Kim. _ ”

Kim furrows her brow. “What.” That door was  _ perfect _ , how can she be criticized for that?

“ _ That’s a really long time, and you went off-script?” _ Hank suggests. “ _ That’s not scalable.” _

Kim frowns and sets her sandwich back into its tupperware. Nag nag nag, classic Hank. “I mean, the job isn’t that long…”

“ _ You’re going to get tired if you do that at every door, and won’t be able to keep up with yourself. You’ll burn out hard in a few days and get fired.” _

Kim is starting to get a little slack jawed. “I don’t know if  _ that’s _ true—”

“ _ It is _ .”

“—well, I got the vote, right?”

“ _ Yeah, I mean, a vote is a vote. It counts for one. You’re supposed to be getting _ **_a lot_ ** _ of them. It’s better to get twenty from people ready to go than like — five from tough cookies _ .”

Kim hesitates. “I — I guess…”

_ “Not, ‘you guess,’ you  _ **_know._ ** _ Kim, you know better than that, come on.” _

Kim groans; she hasn’t had to think about this sort of thing seriously for a hot second and of course now it all comes crashing down that Kim isn’t doing a great job. The theory is that things are urgent and there’s no time to spend on ‘tough cookies,’ that not every person can be someone to reverse engineer. Going up against power structures, the motif is to go go go, not stop and talk. 

“Shit,” Kim says. “But… fuck, I can’t do it then, Hank. That felt  _ good _ , like every time I try using the script I get tripped up. The script  _ sucks _ , it’s so long and passive and wiffly waffly and...”

“ _ Fuck the script then, mark it up, make it your own, but you need to trust the process, Kim,” _ Hank drawls. She can imagine him hunched over his desk with black rings under his eyes. She’s sure he was just doing something miserable, and that’s why he’s taking the time to do this with her. Or maybe he just cares about her. “ _ Trust the process, trust the work, and you’ll feel better. It’s what you were fucking doing with us, right?” _

Kim thinks about that. “I guess so.”

“ _ Mm, yeah. Please, Kim, just trust me on this. You’ve been burning the candle at both ends since I’ve met you, and I can already hear you getting excited that you — ah, found the lighter again. _ ”

“That’s a stupid metaphor.”

“ _ Fuck you, it’s a  _ **_great_ ** _ metaphor,”  _ Hank snarks. “ _ Please Kim, listen to me, and don’t like — text Yori to be like ‘ohmigod do you know what Hank said?’” _

Kim just kinda stares off into the distance. “I’ve literally never done that. Honestly, Yori and I are kinda—”

“ _ No no no,”  _ Hank says with the surefire flourish of a finger waggle. “ _ I just gave you  _ **_great_ ** _ advice, no more from me today. You need to figure out your baggage with Yori independently of me. I gotta go, hit the streets, Kim. Stomp on pavement. Pound on doors, you know.”  _

He hangs up.

Kim really did want to talk about Yori, but… something about that conversation made her smile. She tries to hold onto that smile for as long as she can the rest of the day and even though she doesn’t nail another door like that one earlier, she tried.

* * *

Kim feels relaxed. Hell yeah. She’s really feelin’ herself. Just stepped out of the shower, tossed on her nighttime tank top and boxers, everything’s great. She’s clean, she’s shaven, there ain’t nothing wrong in the world.

And then someone grabs her.

**Kim’s Parents’ House: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 4, 2008: 8:07PM**

First, the back of Kim’s knee thumps against the toilet. She twists back, shoulder blade bumping against the sink and she collapses on the bathmat. Not in too much pain, but annoyed. She looks up, expecting this to be like some weirdo joke from one of her brothers, but instead she’s mere inches from pushing her face into a katana.

Master Sensei stands over Kim, haggard as ever. His robes sit on him like curtains, overlong and wavering. He furrows his withered brow and edges closer to her.

“ **How did you do it?”**

Kim feels a twitch in her own eyebrow and shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

**“Why you?”**

Kim shrugs. “Your star pupil can’t stop thinking about me, I guess.”

Sensei gnashes his teeth. Usually in higher spirits, he is angry beyond words. It takes him several long moments to collect himself. “ **You’ve been able to evade me for so long, Possible-san. You’re skilled.”**

“You’re not recruiting me,” Kim tuts.

Sensei growls and turns away. “ **I don’t understand** .  **He hates you, why would he…** ”

“You try talking to him?” Kim sighs, slinging her arms over the rim of the bathtub. She has half a mind to pull out the Lotus Blade and Darth Maul Sensei, but she knows Sensei’s limits and him  _ actually _ warping his wrinkly ass all the way to Las Vegas is a bit much. If she wanted she could close her eyes and center, she could confirm that really she’s just floating in a space much like her bathroom. Her real body is elsewhere, frozen in some kind of time freeze. 

He’s just in her head; easier for him to pull off. 

“ **We don’t… see eye to eye,”** Sensei admits. “ **On some things at least.”** He seems to second guess himself and checks her facial expression, but Kim isn’t falling for it. She knows he doesn’t give a fuck of what she thinks, he just wants to play her like he did Ron. But she’s been through this before.  **“You possess all the power in the world…”**

“...and I’m crashing with my parents yeah,” Kim finishes. “Got a problem with that?”

Kim twitches and the Lotus Blade appears in the air, aimed right at Sensei’s translucent head. It’d be so easy to pierce that flesh and work the blade all the way through. She knows it won’t kill him, but it might give him a really bad migraine over in Yamanouchi. 

“ **You don’t scare me** ,” Sensei’s mouth barely escapes his drooping mustache. For some reason, maybe because she’s just really tired, this gets a rise from Kim that makes Sensei laugh. His head jerks back and when it returns, his normally closed eyes are half-lidded, bright blue glowing not just between the lids but through the light skin flaps. 

Kim feels a prickling all over her skin, and feels her tendrils sink into Dr. Betty Director’s body again. She feels the bones shatter under the tendril’s wrath and she feels the bloodlust again. She remembers how it feels to kill.

“ **Ha** ,” Sensei chortles, looking at Kim with mild amusement. “ **You really let her have it, huh?** ”

Kim groans and shoves her way past him, escaping into the hallway, which is just a black void that populates with a projection of her hallway a few moments too late. Sensei follows her.. 

“ **You were scared** ,” Sensei observes. “ **Scared not just for your life, but of yourself. You knew you had his power but not what you could do… tell me, Possible-san. Are you sleeping well?”**

Kim feels compelled to answer him, she knows it’s part of his charades but she doesn’t know how to resist it. “Hardly.”

“ **You’re sweating** .”

“Yeah.”

“ **Hmph** ,” he observes. “ **You can’t hold it back. Stoppable-san resisted for too long and look what became of him.** ”

“I’ll never be like him.”

“ **I’m not so sure** ,” he sighs. “ **You’re angry.** ”

“Of course I am. But I’m mad about things that actually matter.”

“ **Ha, I do appreciate how you give me a hard time. Stoppable-san was never so witty,** ” Sensei muses, tailing after her like a clingy child. “ **You’ve hardly used your powers. It’s killing you. You’ll have to act at some point… or give it back to Stoppable-san, I suppose. Your choice.** ”

Kim furrows her brow and glares back at the old man. What does he want here? It’s hard to tell, and he’s just eating it up. “I don’t understand,” she admits, surprised at her own honesty. “Did Ron always… feel this way?”

**“No,** ” Sensei says simply. “ **If you can recall, it was difficult for him to manifest the power… until the one he loved was threatened.”**

Kim remembers being half-conscious, dangling in the air, one of the Lowardian’s scaley fists squeezing her calf. She remembers feeling so helpless.

“ **Then it happened again, you nearly died in Paris.”**

Drunk, confused, trying to wrestle a knife away from Ron’s phantom hands and back into her stomach where it belonged.

“ **And again. New Hampshire.”**

Dying of the cold in a tundra she couldn’t navigate. Left with absolutely nothing. Abandoned. Nearly eaten alive by a wolf.

“ **Washington** **DC.”**

Versus Will Du, how could she forget.

“ **Everytime you needed him, he got stronger, he had to,”** Sensei drawls. “ **Then all it took was the threat. A real threat to his life.”**

Shego blew up the mall, taunted him, practically begged him to beat her senseless. Kim still remembers holding that heavy body that had become so light so fast. The shredded eye. 

“ **Not for millenia had the Mystical Monkey Power responded so strongly to anything,** ” Sensei says. “ **Now you have it, and if you don’t act… you’re going to become just like** **_him_ ** **.”**

“I don’t believe you,” Kim says, which she knows isn’t very clever at all. But she’s at a loss. She’s angry. “I’ll destroy it. I’ll kill the power, and you’ll have  _ nothing.” _

Sensei laughs under his breath, standing deathly still, folding his palms together, sleeves covering his wrists. “ **Good luck with that, Kim-san. Anyways, as you can imagine, this sort of communication is… costly for my health. I will return to Yamanouchi. If you desire to speak with me…** ” His voice goes soft and there’s no smooth transition, Kim just snaps awake in the bathroom, standing where she was before Sensei came out and pushed her to the floor.

She sweats, and feels very aware of her fast heartbeat. It scares her. Because she knows he’s not wrong, if she lets the power fester in her too long, it will consume her just like it did Ron. She can’t let herself become that. 

Her hand rests near her stomach, her whole body practically vibrating, at this point mostly from the anxiety of it all.

“I’ll destroy you,” she mutters. “I’ll find a way.”

* * *

“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Kim sits outside the Bellagio. According to Google, it’s the best casino for poker so she figured that would be the one she would need to check out in her search for Drakken. Lots of riff raff about to scrounge intel from. First she tried coming in as a pretty girl, but that didn’t seem to work so she left and changed into a three piece pinstripe suit with a fedora. Little Big “Big” Daddy memorabilia for ya.

Now she sits next to a trash can, hand cradling a free drink one of the service people just handed to her. It’s empty now, aside from the ice, but she likes the ice. Chewing the cubes into bits helps when she’s nervous. But she can’t chew when she’s about to hop on a call.

“ _ This is Big Daddy,” _ Big Daddy says.

**The Bellagio: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 5, 2008: 11:53PM**

“Dis is de Big “Big,” chump,” Kim smirks, dropping the deep voice immediately, stretching her legs out. “I got news for you.”

“ _ Oh God,” _ Big Daddy drawls. “ _ What. What could it possibly be.” _

Kim definitely does not appreciate Big Daddy’s attitude. “I scrounged up some intel at the Bellagio—”

“ _ Stop,” _ Big Daddy says. “ _ Why.” _

Kim frowns. She would expect this kind of pushback from Hank, but from Big Daddy? Geez. 

“Well, I’m trying to find Drakken — ”

“ _ Oof. _ ”

“ — yeah,  _ oof, _ sure,” Kim sighs. “But he used to do karaoke in Vegas. I bumped into him a while back on that first job I got from you.”

_ “Ah _ ,” Big Daddy sighs. She can picture him leaning over his desk, beady eyes barely focused. “ _ So you found out about his mafia career?” _

Kim blinks, all dry mouthed. “I — y-yeah, what? You knew?”

“ _ Mm,” _ Big Daddy hums. “ _ Ever since you spilled the beans on the last Big “Big”’s identity, I’ve made it my business to keep an eye on him. It was mostly radio silence honestly, but shortly after your attempt, he started working his mafia know-how again.” _

Kim gulps; she didn’t know the timeline, though she could have guessed it. Drakken probably views his Kim Possible Project as another one of his failures. That explains why he’s back at his usual tricks. 

Trying to regain her footing, Kim says, “I think we should take him out.”

_ “Take him out? Heavens, no, we’re not doing that,” _ Big Daddy says. “ _ Drakken is a small fry — he’s not a threat to us or you… let alone the planet, which I think you need to threaten to be placed on our ‘list _ .’”

“Maybe I just don’t like him,” Kim admits. No use trying to pull the wool over Big Daddy’s eyes. 

“ _ That may be so, but it doesn’t mean he’s worth it,”  _ Big Daddy says.

“He’s trying to rebuild a new Attitudinator, I think,” Kim says as if that could be enough. She’s tracked down the parts that Drakken’s thugs have been looting. “In a few days, he goes after some Moodulators in this Hench Co. warehouse, the Attitudinator is a problem.”

“ _ Not our problem.” _

“What? Yes, it is, what if he, like, used it on me, or…”

“ _ Himself? You both suck at being bad guys, I don’t see it,” _ he says with the warmth of a smirk. “ _ Even if he pulls off making one, he won’t be on the scene long. His goons are not trained, he has bad advisors, and he himself is self-destructive. If the police don’t get to him, someone else will. He’s bound to piss the wrong people off _ —”

“Like me,” Kim says defiantly.

“ _ —oof, you are so hard to talk to sometimes, you know that? _ ” Big Daddy laments. “ _ I love you, but,  _ **_wow,_ ** _ the mouth on you. Please Kim. Just listen to me. Don’t go after him, focus on getting healthier. And if that’s hard for you, think about the work. Trust the work.” _

Kim blinks and finally knocks a chunk of ice into her mouth. “Hank said that to me last time I talked to him.”

“ _ I know. We’re going for a thematic.” _

* * *

Kim is trying, she’s really trying. While her parents are out at work, she tries cooking dinner for them. It goes poorly.

**Kim’s Parents’ House: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 7, 2008: 4:46PM**

Everynight they cook for Kim, it was always like that back in high school. Kim was so busy she just ate whatever was thrown to her. But now, she has all the time in the world so it feels like she should be the adult and make things for everyone else. 

Kim also likes mooching off her parents because they have way more money for groceries than she ever did; there was a reason she had to live off those stupid free meal kits that got sent to Kim daily from Shego via Shego’s shitty, abusive will. 

Tonight, she’s doing this kidney bean based vegan meatball thing that she found on the Thug Kitchen website, but she’s already getting kind of stressed out making them because in the picture, the beanballs look so smooth, nigh unmistakable from normal meatballs. But Kim’s don’t look like that at all, they look these chunks of bread with beans and onion jammed into them. 

Kim tries to reshape them and crush the beans more, but no matter how many beans she splits the balls don’t look any different. They look like beans. Super unpresentable, her parents always make nice looking food and Kim is about to give them something so sloppy that… ugh. 

Kim almost wants to throw it all out, run to the store, buy more cans of beans so she can try to crush them better this time. But it’s probably too late, her parents are supposed to be back soon and the food will be in the oven — already unideal, she wanted it ready for them when they come in the door.

Kim tries reshaping them one last time when the door opens and she hears her mother exhale.

“Hi honey,” her mom calls out.

Dammit. Why is she home early? This sucks.

“H-hi!” Kim shouts. 

“Are you in the kitchen?” Mom yells back, and peeks her head in. She grins and walks over to Kim tied up in her mom’s apron and gently takes her by the shoulders from behind. “What are you cooking?”

“Um…” Kim frowns even harder. “Kidney bean balls, they’ll, um, be ready in like a half hour.”

“They look delicious, honey,” Mom says, scooping the mixing bowl off the table and bringing it over to the sink. “I’ll help you with clean-up.”

“N-no, you don’t have to…” Kim stutters. “I… um, wanted you and Dad to take the night off.”

Mom stops near the sink, eyes slightly narrowing to focus better. “Ah, well that’s really considerate of you. I mean, you don’t have to do it all by yourself, Kim. If it’s that important to you, I’ll let you clean-up but…”

Kim considers that. She  _ is _ pretty anxious. 

“Okay. You can help me,” she says.

* * *

"You heard how someone iced Betty Director, yeah?"

The second mook sniffs. "I t’ought I heard that — whaddaya think that's about?"

**Hench Co. Warehouse: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 9, 2008: 11:01PM**

Kim  _ really _ shouldn’t be here right now, but alas, she’s waiting in the shadows dressed up in a black turtleneck with a red bandanna wrapped around her whole head, leaving just a slit for her eyes to peek through. Like a badass ninja.

Kim is supposed to be done — for now at least, but she can’t help it. She knows  _ he _ ’s here. She needs to meet his eyes and let him see what he did to her.

Down below, crossing the main floor is a pair of goons holding a stretcher loaded up with science junk. Kim bets it's full of Moodulators, which are now Hench Co. property commonly sold to Global Justice agents. The few that are left. But that isn’t important, Moodulators, as Kim learned last year, can easily be used to engineer an Attitudinator. Oof.

Mooks are all over the room. The ringleader, Drakken she thinks, is wedged deep into a corner, arms folded at his chest. Kim thinks she sees him smoking. She hoped the brief flicker from his lighter would be enough to cast an orange glow across his whole face, but all she can make out is his pointy ass chin.

Kim looks at the two bozos with the stretcher and rolls her eyes, gently hoisting herself under one of the girders and dropping to the floor. She ducks down and runs at them, slinking through shadow to stay hidden.

The first mook shrugs. "See, what I think — is that it was an inside job, ya get?"

The second mook mulls this over. “Huh — that’s a bit intense. Who ya think iced her then? You thinking that Stoppable kid?”

Ew, no. Ron  _ so  _ didn’t kill Betty, that was all her. Even though it was a complete accident (at first.) She makes it under the stretcher and quickly her legs shift into a slow waddle, matching the pace of the two goons. She presses her hands up against the bottom and waits for her moment.

“Imma thinkin’ that Stoppable kid, mebbe,” the first goon chuckles. “Eitha way, it’s no good to guys like us.”

“Yeah, no good,” the second goon says. “Least wit’ all dese powerhouses fightin’ each other, they ain’t looking over here at us, huh?”

Kim groans, she can’t keep doing this and shoves the stretcher up. As her arms extend all the way, the stretcher flips and all the junk tumbles across the floor in a mess. The goons shriek and back up, clumsily going for their guns. Kim rises slowly, her body just off-black enough that she’s visible in the dark. She almost wants to quip something funny, like,  _ “Little late for a delivery, isn’t it, boys?” _ but she’s just so fucking tired, and she really needs to make it home bloodless so she won’t get in trouble.

Her fists lash out and smash the first goon in the jaw.  _ Crack! _ He falls over and she kicks him in the stomach, and that’s it for him. Her foot carries along with the momentum and crashes behind her, she twirls around and unwinds, second foot nailing the second goon in the face. Just like the first one he stumbles back. Kim rolls into a sweeping kick that trips him up and  _ Crack! _ goes his head when it hits the dirty pavement.

There’s a loud  _ Bang! _ and all over, Kim’s nerves pop, the Mystical Monkey Power coming to life to send Kim into action. But she resists its pull, she has to, it’s begging her to destroy far more than necessary. She focuses and squeezes her hand, and grabs onto the fallen stretcher from several feet away. She pulls it over and it spins into place before her, shielding her from the bullets. She sees the ugly protrusions the bullets cast into the iron from behind and Kim moves forward, levitating the stretcher with her mind. It spins around her, catching more bullets from other incoming goons, but Kim stays focused on the guy who tried to shoot her in the fucking head.

The stretcher slips past and reveals him. She decks him hard, his head jerks back and he comes in for Round 2 when the stretcher comes between them again. He waits and when it passes, Kim moves fist and nails him in the stomach. She grabs him by the shoulders and knees him again and again and again, and tosses his limp body aside. 

Maybe she used a bit too much force, she needs to calm down.

_ Bang bang bang! _

The stretcher plants itself into the ground besides her, cracking the stone apart and Kim leaps up, grabbing onto it. She twirls along with it, spinning in place, moving too fast to catch any detail but the Mystical Monkey Power living in her tells her when to release. She lets go and her legs cave around one goon’s neck.  _ Crash! _ they hit the floor together, with her crouched over him. He points the gun at her face and she howls, sending her fist towards his face — with maybe too much power once again. 

Kim senses that and at the last second moves off-target and punches the floor directly besides the goon’s head instead. Her knuckle burns hitting the floor head-on, but still crumbles the stone into dust. The goon screams, “Don’t kill me!” 

Great. Kim knees him in the chin and gets up slowly. This sucks. She’s in way over her head.

More shooting, she turns her head over lazily to the guy attacking her and doesn’t bother with dodging, or even sending the stretcher over to shield. She pinches the reality around her and the bullets fade right before they strike her body, and reappear directly behind her, continuing to fly off into the wall behind her. Like she’s some kind of ghost.

It definitely scares the shit out of the goon. He fires again and the same thing happens. Kim walks towards him slowly and when she gets bored of it, reaches at the air and grabs his wrist from across the room. The revolver falls from his gloved hand and she pinches her knees together, warping across the room and appearing on the guy’s shoulders, thighs crushing his head. He falls like lumber and she rolls off him.

Kim feels the Mystical Monkey Power crackling around her, begging her to do so much more with it, so she warps again, this time between two of the goons who were actually trying to escape. They swing at her and she dodges, her fist cracks into a jaw and this time she really feels the bone pushing against her knuckle. She grimaces and punches again and again and again until they’re all out. The room goes quiet, aside from the sound of scrambling feet. Kim looks over her shoulder and sees the retreatin’ ringleader and her eyes flare wide, a soft blue aura covering everything in the warehouse. 

It’s all so fragile. 

Kim could catch him so easily, but she resists. She runs after the guy and wills herself to stow the power away, and it burns her chest when it comes back to her. But like this, she can’t catch up, he’s going to get away unless she…

Kim senses the stretcher still lodged into the floor and summons it. It flies at her, spinning in vicious circles before coming to her side, waiting for her like a floating surfboard or something. She climbs on and surges after the mobster, managing to cut him off from the exit, nearly ramming into the door herself. The stretcher curves high up, hitting a steep incline to avoid collision. 

And then Kim hears the dude draw.

Kim twists the stretcher into a 180, arched high over the ringleader. He fires his gun and she feels it impact the stretcher between her feet, but she stays cool headed and lets the stretcher flop back down. The moment she’s level with him, she dropkicks him to the ground. He crumples faster than any of his goons and rolls across the floor, dropping his gun immediately.

Kim hops off the stretcher and briskly makes her way over to him. Hunched back, ratty ponytail, tiny hands, it has to be him. Just his stupid fedora is blocking his face.

“Who the Hell are you?” he snarls.

Kim sneers back and grabs him by the front of his stupid mobster shirt. “Check the name, you—”

Kim drags him high enough that she can finally make out his face and he is… decidedly not Drakken. Some old white guy with messy facial hair and a pointed jaw. Possibly the most generic mob guy she’s ever seen. Fucking Christ.

“Where’s Drakken?” Kim growls.

The guy just smirks. Sirens. White light flaring through the windows. Son of a motherfuckin’ bitch. 

Kim kicks him in the throat and moves fast. It’s not hard to escape with the Mystical Monkey Power, it’s just annoying, especially when she’s so angry that her aura keeps trying to explode into a heat wave that will destroy everything in her path. 

(She’s definitely understanding why Ron had so much difficulty controlling his powers now that it’s her stupid burden.)

Kim escapes through the skylight she broke in from and scampers off without being seen. The second she’s alone in a dark alleyway, she pulls the mask off and slaps it against her thigh. Her whole face is caked in sweat, so much sweat it feels like it could weigh enough to peel her face off. 

She punches a brick and it explodes into dust in a very unsatisfying way. She leans her back against the same wall and slumps to the ground, elbows balancing on her knees.

That was her fucking chance. She planned that for weeks, gathering intel and threading together her stupid vigilante costume, and in her excitement she forgot the most important thing about Drakken: he outsources his help, he never actually shows up to his shindigs. How many more times had Kim seen Shego solo than with Drakken? 

Fucking Christ how did she forget that? How could she be so —

_ Beep beep de-beep. _

Kim blinks and checks her dumb flip phone, holding it up to her face. It’s a text from her parents.

_ where r u _

Shit shit shit.

* * *

Kim isn’t grounded or anything, but she definitely doesn’t want to press her luck so she stays in for the next few days. After several lonely nights pass on, Kim asks Rhino if they can Skype together. He texts her back “ _ Yeeeeeessss!!!!! _ ” almost immediately. Obviously.

**Kim’s Parents’ House: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 13, 2008: 8:47PM**

“ _ Aw man, KP, I did not know Legally Blonde had a pro-shot, _ ” Rhino says with starry eyes as they sync up their video. The moment  _ Ohmigod You Guys! _ , the opening number, starts and the subtitles come in, Rhino bursts with excitement once again and claps his palms together. “ _ And it’s a singalong!” _

“Well, maybe we can sing along next time,” Kim laughs. “I kinda just want to appreciate the original cast in this.”

“ _ Oh yeah, for sure. _ ”

It’s that moment there’s a knock at the door. Kim looks up and silences her mic, flashing a signal to Rhino that it’s okay for him to keep watching. She struts over to the door and pops it open a crack, and sees her anxious mother.

“Hi, I just wanted to check in with you,” Mom says. “Before, you know, I don’t see you again until tomorrow night.”

They really don’t spend a lot of time together for a family that’s supposed to be sticking together during a really difficult time. 

“Um, Mom, do you want to meet my friend, Rhino?” Kim asks. “We’re watching  _ Legally Blonde _ together.”

“The movie?”

“The musical, Mom. Get with the times.”

Mom considers it, biting her lip, and then nods. “Sure, you said he’s nice, right?”

“They’re all nice, Mom,” Kim says, gently guiding her into her room by the hand. “Except Vinny, he’s kind of an asshole on a surface level.” 

Kim slides back in front of her laptop, shifting to leave just enough room for her mom to squeeze in. Carefully, Kim splits the earbuds and hands one over to her mom, already grinning at Rhino going nuts on her webcam. 

“ _ Oooooh snap! Is this  _ **_the_ ** _ Mrs. Dr. P? _ ” Rhino asks like a kid on their birthday.

“Uh, yes,” Mom says. “You’re Rhino?”

“ _ Yup yup, dat’s me. You raised a good kid, Mrs. Possible.” _

Kim blushes. “Rhino!”

“ _ I only speak the truth, ma’am,” _ Rhino offers. “ _ Alright, you guys missed a lot already. Through exposition in this opening number, we learn that everyone is expecting Werner to propose to his longtime girlfriend, Elle Woods  _ — ”

“Rhino, they’re still singing the opening number,” Kim shakes her head. “We’ll catch up. It’s not a very hard hitting show.”

Rhino crosses his arms. “Yeah, alright. Don’t complain to me when you don’t get it.”

Though Kim is indeed very focused on the musical, she does hear her mom laugh into her right ear. She knew her mom would like Rhino.

* * *

This is the first week where Kim has taken a shower every single day in a really long time. It’s weird to feel so refreshed every day, it makes her wonder why she skipped out on this so often and what her damage was. 

**Kim’s Parents’ House: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 16, 2008: 7:02PM**

Kim wipes the steam off the mirror with her towel and catches a glimpse of her face before the steam returns and re-clouds the glass. She smiles and rolls the towel around her back, thinking about what she wants to do tonight.

Mid-drying, she feels her dick hanging between her legs and it doesn’t really bother her. She’s been off and on about the whole thing, but when the towel claps against her flat chest, and she meets her eyes in the mirror she really feels like herself.

Despite everything that’s happening, every setback, every identity crisis, every regression, Kim is still alive and this isn’t a body she’s been forced into. It’s not what Ron did to her back in England. It’s what she did to  _ herself _ in Colorado…

...and she sorta thought for a while that she had made a huge mistake. But now it’s just like — it’s like she’s  _ always _ been in this body.

She doesn’t really think about most of this though. She just feels happy, and she likes how smooth her skin is tonight and how her complexion glows. She’s on a good path now, thanks to her friends backing her up.

* * *

Sometimes Kim needs to blow things up — literally (unfortunately.) Because of Kim’s PTSD, she tends to overreact to little things. Things that cause minor amounts of anxiety for most send Kim all the way to the top — everything is a crisis for her and when she’s been stockpiling too much Mystical Monkey Power? 

It’s dangerous.

For everyone around her. Possibly everyone in Nevada.

**The Mojave Desert: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 17: 3:30am**

From Kim’s understanding, late night people are up until 3am at the latest — and morning people are usually up at 4am, therefore the safest time to do bad things is between then. So what Kim does is she jacks her parents’ car after they pass out at 11, and drives, drives, drives. Drives until she is positive no one is nearby. 

Even then, it’s a huge risk, people can probably see her using her powers from farther out than she can imagine, but she doesn’t know what else to do.

Kim finds a good spot to explode at around 2am, and hangs out there, waiting, keeping her dry eyes on the clock. God this sucks. After this she needs to drive three hours back, get groceries, and pretend to have slept the whole night. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t tell her parents the truth, she just really doesn’t want to.

At 3:30, Kim steps out and onto the sand. It’s very cold out, she wraps her hoodie tighter to her chest and gets off the road, trying to ignore how beautiful the night sky is; she needs to focus.

Kim’s muscles tense and she’s sure that she starts blue eye-ing like right away. Her clothes waver with the sway of her powers and her teeth grit hard. Knowing she’s alone, Kim chances a blood curdling scream. Her whole body shakes with her howl and it feels good. Concentrating hard, Kim lets the power release from her blood and shift into sparks that swirl around her hands.

Kim raises her heels and gently, she floats up into the air, her forehead wrinkling. She screams again and the power collects in her hands, blistering into beams that strike the ground. The sand kicks up immediately, erupting into big clouds as if a giant were smashing their feet everywhere. A sandstorm swirls around Kim’s energy and she is sure that cacti is wavering, about to be ripped from the ground.

Kim focuses on protecting organic life and keeps her powers separate from that, pouring extra energy into shielding the plants and dirt creatures slumbering nearby. When she is sure they are safe, Kim lets the sandstorm go wild and it’s the whole area that goes up this time. She tries to contain it, but she needs to release, she needs to let it go so off it goes —  _ boom _ .

Then it ends. Kim falls onto the ground, slumped over, the sandstorm gone, the night as quiet as it was before Kim got out of the car. Her arms buzz with relief, everything throbbing from the release but subsiding fast. Panting, Kim falls against the ground and clutches her head. No more Mystical Monkey Build-up… but for how long? This definitely isn’t sustainable. 

Kim gets up and trudges back over to the car when…

_ Beep beep de-beep! _

What? Who could be calling her right now? Isn’t it like… 3:30 in the morning, right?

_ Beep beep de-beep! _

Alright, alright. Kim pulls out her flip phone and opens it up without looking at the caller. She’s okay with a surprise.

“ _ Yo KP _ .”

...Nong Man.

Shit.

“Uh, hang on, man?” Kim says awkwardly.

“ _ Nice try, that was an obvious ‘hang on, man’ instead of a ‘hey nong man.’ So how’s it going?” _

“Um, I’m okay,” Kim sighs, climbing into her car. “Hey, it’s late, can we talk tomorrow? You, uh, woke me up.”

“ _ Awww _ ,” Nong Man coos. “ _ You sure about that _ ?”

“Yeah!” Kim chirps, knowing that he already knows she’s full of shit.

“ _ So why did the Mojava just go boom, huh?” _

Kim blinks and raps her fingers against the wheel. “Shit.”

Nong Man bursts into laughter. “ _ It’s cool, don’t worry, I’m just, um, I’m on monitor duty and I saw these whacked out energy readings from where you’re at.” _

Kim sighs, she already kind of knew that the others were on monitor duty detail for her sake. Though she is debatably the strongest person in the world right now, she’s (trying to be) on a pacifist streak which makes her easy pickings for Global Justice and Ron.

“I have to do this every now and then,” Kim explains, with some mild agitation. She starts the car up anyways and starts driving because she really needs to get back home on time and it’s a tight enough turnaround as is. “The power builds up and I don’t know how else to release it safely.”

“ _ Mm, yeah, I can imagine that’s tough. But I’m not gonna lie, KP, you holding onto this power and using it to blow up the desert every few days… I don’t know if your Big “Big” Daddy self would like that.” _

Kim grimaces. “I’m not talking about this with you on the phone.”

“ _ Then don’t. Grab dinner tomorrow night?” _

That catches Kim off guard. Letting Nong Man in… before Yori? Feels bad, man. But Kim is really fucking lonely.

...

It is so bizarre sitting across from Nong Man of all people after all this time. Not Yori, not Hank, not Big Daddy, not Rhino…  _ Nong Man _ . 

But sometimes Kim thinks that Nong Man gets her most. (Even though he is clearly the OCiest of the OCs.)

((Yeah, I can make fun of myself.))

**Flaming Patty’s: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 18, 2008: 6:42PM**

Kim orders a veggie burger made of beans and corn, Nong Man gets a tuna sandwich. Kim almost wants to make fun of him for that, but she doesn’t really know what the joke would be. 

Nong Man takes a drink of black coffee and lets his arms rest against the table. He smiles through his beard and shakes his head at her. 

“What?” Kim asks.

“It’s just been a really long time,” Nong Man sighs, patting a hand against his face. “The damage control after the Weapons Library hit was brutal, but it was worth it. That shit you did when you were toe-to-toe with Stopstop made this guy — ” he points at himself, “ — weep.” Both hands slap the table. “Seriously, Kimmie. Good job.”

“Thanks,” Kim smiles. “So, um… you want me to go back?”

“Yeah,” Nong Man shrugs. “I know what you’re doing, I just don’t see how this is going to be productive. You probably plateaued like a month ago, right?”

Kim thinks about that, and yeah, plateau is a good word for that. That first hump was brutal but she made it through and now she’s just… living. With major symptoms and issues, but she’s alive and a lot more functional than before.

“I like it out here,” Kim lies. She knows it’s bullshit, so she corrects herself. “I’m… scared, of getting sucked into all this violence again.”

“Well,” Nong Man swallows. “It’s like… wouldn’t you rather use Stopstop’s jacked powers to like blow up more Global Justice shit?”

“Yeah,” Kim admits.

“And wouldn’t you rather, like…” Nong Man squints, trying to ensnare the right words. He’s definitely put a lot of thought into this. He’s  _ very _ tired. “...keep fighting for what you believe in? I mean, Kim, I’ve been in a lot of gangs and none of them —  _ none of them  _ — have lasted this long without leadership.  _ No one has left the Bermuda Triangle _ , myself included. We’re waiting here with baited breath for what you’ll have us do next.”

Kim smiles, but it feels wrong so she makes herself frown.

Nong Man gets a little exasperated, “That’s fuckin’ cool, KP! I know you’re hurting, I just don’t… I don’t see what more you can get from this. You’re going to have to go back out there again eventually, and I mean, if you wanna perfect your mental state, that’s chill, but it’s going to take you  _ years _ .”

Kim sighs. “Nong Man, I… I might need years.”

Something dark flashes in his eyes, not something she’s seen in a long time. “ _ The planet doesn’t have years _ .”

Kim feels something inside her scream; she didn’t expect him to say that. She thought he’d say, like, _ he _ doesn’t have years, or something, not… not the planet.

Kim frowns and folds her arms together. “Nong Man, I… can we talk about something else? I’m sorry.”

Nong Man’s fat lips pinch themselves into a really sharp smirk and reluctantly, he swats at the air and downs another mug of coffee. “Sure. Uh — can I pick your brain on the Mystical Monkey Bullshit? I got some questions for ya.”

Kim rolls her eyes. She has even less to say when it comes to Ron’s powers, but it beats the alternative… probably. 

“Yeah, sure,” she sighs.

...

Kim could have driven herself, but she intentionally took the bus so that Nong Man would have to drive her back and they’d get to spend more time together.

**Nong Man’s Shitty Car: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 18, 2008: 7:08PM**

But Nong Man and Kim don’t have very much to say to each other at all, it’s very awkward.

Kim slumps back in the chair, eyes trailing out the window. Her pupils bob up and down with the passing ‘obstacles,’ like park benches, fire hydrants, and street lamps. Not fun, this is what she would do as a kid when she was bored with her parents. Nong Man should not be giving her this kind of vibe.

“You okay?” she asks suddenly. She’s sure he’s fine.

Nong Man takes in a deep breath. “Yeah, Kim, oh-bee-vee, I’m okay. I just miss it, is all.”

Kim sighs. This sucks. She slumps even deeper into the chair and focuses on Nong Man’s jams. Some kind of rock musical thi— since when does Nong Man… ? 

“Yo,” she says suddenly.

“Yeah?” Nong Man asks.

“Rhino got you into musicals too?”

“ _ Ya little creep, you’re gonna pay, I won’t be shoved out of the way, oh no.” _

_ “OH NO.” _

_ “Oh no!” _

_ “OH NO!” _

Nong Man laughs. “Yeah, I guess so. I’ve been crashing with him so much that him and Yori decided I should just move in with them.”

“Mm. FOMO,” Kim rasps. “I’d love to live with you three.”

“Tsch,” Nong Man flashes his teeth. “I guess it’d make it easier for us when you pass out at your Big “Big” Daddy desk.”

“Ha ha,” Kim laughs sardonically. She focuses on the music for a second. This song reminds her of something… of a moment. She thinks about it. Her first impression is the color green, and then the color black. She thinks of dazzling emerald beams lighting up a black void, and she pictures… Shego…

...yeah, this is when Kim was gate crashing BP and Ron fucked with her head… or like, Ron’s subconscious or whatever. Back when she was like thirteen and trans for the first time, and… she watched the Shego ghoul slap a phantom Kim around. 

It makes Kim wince. She doesn’t like this song very much, though she is rather fond of the musical  _ Bat Boy _ , which this song is from.

“I hate this show,” Nong Man says suddenly. “Like… the whole thing is the dude rapes his wife and then the wife immediately gets raped by a gaggle of bats, so like, the daughter and Bat Boy are siblings even though they want to bonk each other.”

Kim nods; this is true. That is the actual storyline to Bat Boy, and it’s pretty telling that the lowlight of the show is also one of the only major plot points to not be covered in song… so if you were a cast album kid you wouldn’t know that’s the twist. 

“I just like it because Rhino does,” Kim admits. “I like most things because he does. He makes it all seem so cool.”

“Yeah,” Nong Man pats the wheel. “He has that effect on people.”

More silence passes by, the opening bit to this song,  _ Comfort and Joy _ , passes along and it moves onto the next set of characters. It’s one of  _ those _ Act 1 Finales where it checks in with every character, classic Broadway. 

Kim nods along but doesn’t feel very much, even though her heart is pounding from the memory of Shego.

“You need me to switch it or something?” Nong Man raises his eyebrow. “You seem stressed.”

“Huh?” Kim blurts out. “No, no, I’m fine, I’m good, it’s, uh… it’s alright.”

“Alright,” Nong Man says. “Left here?”

“Yup.”

The song continues and Kim gets increasingly spacy until… 

" _ Dear God… _ "

This is Bat Boy’s part. Deven May’s performance is so juicy. He does this silly Dracula-like accent in such an endearing and empathetic way. It makes Kim’s heart freeze in place, and she feels her body pull inwards.

She remembers this too.

" _ I'm still not sure why people pray… _ "

Yori had Kim dead to rights, pressed against her knee, face over the precipice, taking the smog from the smokestack head on. She was choking, sobbing when she could catch her breath to beg Yori to stop. Kim didn’t do anything and Yori wouldn’t believe her.

And then, this song just kinda came to Kim. Ron’s talons burrowed through her mind and it was clear she was dying, and he was trying to figure out what her real master plan was… and then… Kim just started singing.

Kim’s lips barely part to whisper out the lyrics, but she keeps it quiet, very aware of Nong Man sitting right besides her.

" _...or what one does with one's hands. _ "

But Kim does cry. The tears are heavy and drench her cheeks. She thinks of that smoke, of that day where she had to bring a freakin’ katana to her own neck to get Ron to fuck off. The same day that Sensei and Ron used Yori and Kim’s bodies to fight each other as if they were nothing more than tools.

Nong Man reaches out and rubs Kim’s back. She leans into his touch and really lets the tears come out now.

_ "But please my thirst grows every day! I feel it crawl through my veins!" _

What the fuck even happened to her? She was so motivated, and then it all just came tumbling down at one point. 

Kim was so driven, so pointed. She had the game set and she choked. She let the people in Michigan get to her and...

_ "Please won't you change the way I am. Or prove I'm human underneath…" _

...fuck them, she was right. Kim didn’t risk everything just to give up because some rightwing motherfuckers gave her a hard time. Kim smiles, anticipating the next lyrics, which Bat Boy just shouts at the top of his lungs instead of singing...

" **_Or if you just don't give a damn!_ ** "

Kim batters her back against the seat (softly) to the rhythm of the song, feeling so goddamn satisfied. That rage. God, she hasn’t felt angry in a while, or at least, not angry at the things that actually matter.

_ "You could at least get rid of theeeeeeeese!" _

Kim’s eyes go wide and she wakes up. She remembers what she saw that day, the vision that put her onto this bloody path.

She sees a volcanic eruption that happened two hundred fifty one million years ago; Kim doesn’t know enough to really get it but in her mind’s eye, she sees a black cloud of carbon spread across the globe with this one red hot spot in what eventually became Siberia.

She sees trees in the rainforest crashing and burning today, the smoke as thick and dense as it was hundreds of millenia ago. 

She sees bulldozers and the like destroying everything in their path. She sees them dig trenches like canals that drain all the moisture and life from these beautiful trees, so that they may be easier to burn.

She sees climate change raise the sea levels, raise the river levels, and the fish eggs that are supposed to be lodged at the river bed rise up and wash away to the shore where they die.

She sees Jack Hench laughing. She hears Betty… laughing. She imagines Ron snorting like a bull among all this, ignoring it, dead set on finding Kim and wringing her neck. 

Kim feels death.

_ "If I can't prove them wrong, show me where I belong, for a hunger so strong kills all — " _

__ **_COM_ **

**_FORT_ **

**_AND_ **

**_JOY!"_ **

Nong Man snaps his fingers and Kim blinks herself back into alertness. She looks over to him, suddenly so distant from this music that she can hardly hear on the radio. Seconds ago it was all blaring in her ears. “Did you turn the volume down?” she asks.

Nong Man raises an eyebrow. “No? You alright? I was crackin’ jokes an’ shit and you were just staring.”

“Oh,” Kim sighs. “I was just… thinking.” She smiles to herself and knees the glove compartment, popping it open and waiting for it is a revolver. She snags it fast, letting it dangle in her hand. 

“You know…” Nong Man tucks his chin into his neck with some apprehension. “...I did hear about your hit on Drakken’s gang. Pretty badass, but I gotta say…” He gently pushes the revolver back towards the glove compartment. “...total waste of your energy.”

A little rage flares up in Kim. “Why? Fuck him.”

“I mean, this is what’s confusing me — you have this  _ thing _ about Drakken and — don’t make that face, it’s totes a  _ thing _ at this point — and it has  _ nothing _ to do with  _ the work _ .”

“What? Like climate stuff?” Kim asks.

“Yeah, Drakken’s just some thug now.”

Kim crosses her arms at her chest and takes in a very deep breath. “He fucked with my head. Played me and manipulated me… wouldn’t answer my calls when I asked for help and now… he’s acting like none of it happened.”

Kim hears a breath catch in Nong Man’s throat. She smiles and continues, “Like he decided I wasn’t worth it after all and he’s back to it… he’s trying to build his own Attitudinator actually.”

“Why?” Nong Man asks. “We have one.”

“He probably thinks I destroyed it,” Kim says. “Seeing how I never went as dark as he expected me to.”

“Well,” Nong Man chews on his cheek. “I dunno, just fuck off and leave him alone. He ain’t gettin’ shit done. Like, I’m well connected, I know who he’s working with and they suck donkey dick. Really, he should be focused on hiring better people, but eh. He’s earned himself sort of a bad name.”

Kim blinks. Blinks again. “H-how?”

“Well,” he shrugs. “He had Shego — probably his best chance at a super powered partnership — and blew it by sending her in as a sacrificial lamb. Which set Stopstop off his leash and now…”

“People are scared,” Kim says plainly. “Of Ron.”

“And you.”

Lots of blinking from Kim today. “What? People are scared of… me?”

“You jacked his powers—”

“Right.”

“I wasn’t finished,” Nong Man snips. “You also kicked his super powered ass every time — even though you’re a normie. Oh and you killed Betty.”

“It was an accident.”

“Don’t matta,” Nong Man hoists his shoulders up and focuses on the road. “Way it goes. God, this is a tangent, point is — Drakken sucks, you rock, and you have ideas. You need to implement those ideas and do the work. Help us help you help everyone… or don’t. Take your time, we’re on standby because for some reason we’re all super invested in you.”

Kim nods and bows her head. Definitely an awkward position to be in. 

“ _ Comfort and Boy _ makes me think about climate change,” Kim says pointedly. “It’s a long story — but I have some ideas on what to do next. I just need a week.” She looks out the window again. “If you come back here a week from today, I’ll be ready to come with you.”

Kim holds her hand out without looking and sticks out her pinky. She feels one of Nong Man’s digits wrap around hers. 

“Fuck yeah,” he grunts.

* * *

Kim doesn’t know how to tell her family that she’s leaving soon; she should probably tell them soon but it’s just like… painful.

Her leaving without any kind of signalling is even worse though. Kim can’t do that, can’t be that person. She needs to own it and tell them all straight.

So she starts with her brothers.

“What are you guys playing?” she asks, walking into the living room. They’re crowded around the box TV and playing  — well, a video game. A video game about a man smacking some dude in a cloak around with a giant key, but still — a video game. No experimental rockets, no chemistry sets, just normal kid stuff.

“Kingdom Hearts 2,” Jim says.

Tim shakes his head. “Dude, c’mon. Just own it. It’s Kingdom Hearts 2.5 Final Mix+, Kim.”

**Kim’s Parents’ House: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 21, 2008, 8:50PM**   
  
“Ah,” Kim sits besides the two of them, staring at the screen blanky. The game looks cool, but she’s still confused. “Why are you…”

“We modded the PS2,” Jim says, looking over to Tim.

“Yeah, this version is only available in Japan,” Tim says.

“Wow,” Kim remarks, even though she’s not actually stunned by them modding the console. In fact, that is probably the most lowkey thing they’ve ever done. It’s been a while since she’s really seen these two as her kid brothers. 

Kim was actually planning on going back to her room to sulk, but she might as well sulk around Jim and Tim. She keeps her eyes on the screen and feels  _ very _ stimulated. The way these two characters move. The one in the cloak is so fast, he slides around the  — is that like a stained glass… platform? they’re fighting on? — tailed by trails of light splintering from his boots. “Who is that?” Kim asks.

“Roxas,” Tim says. “The other one is Sora.”

“Sora,” Kim repeats, still watching. It’s so fast. Even when ‘Sora’ lands some kind of combo on ‘Roxas,’ hitting him enough times to knock him high into the air, Roxas still kicks himself out of it. He swings his twin blades over his head, throwing himself into a corkscrew as he crashes to the ground. As he does this, four thin columns of blue light materialize around him and surge forward. This Roxas guy is always doing like three different attacks at once, it’s incredible.

And it’s not unfamiliar. It reminds her of something… of… oh.

Kim snaps her fingers. “That’s how Ron fights!”

Jim or Tim, whichever one is actually playing, pauses the game, and both twins look at her; Kim never talks about Ron. Mostly because it is so painful. Kim looks at them glumly. “Keep playing,” she mutters.

Jim raises an eyebrow and Tim hunches over the controller again. The fight resumes and Roxas zips to the center of the stage, rising into the air, apparently impervious since Tim has Sora run away. 

“Pause,” Kim says suddenly. “I want to try something. Can you guys drive out to the desert with me?”

…

The drive is nice. Kim doesn’t do much talking, she just listens to her brothers tell her about their lives since she left them over a year ago for Paris. They’ve definitely done a lot of growing up since then, but they’re definitely still thirteen. Mature for thirteen, but thirteen.

**The Mojave Desert: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 21, 2008, 11:07PM**

Kim drives them pretty far out, not as far as she usually goes, and pulls over. They get out and Kim steps out, walking towards an open plane. When she catches her brothers following her, she swats her hand towards them. “Switch your phones to airplane mode, and can you record me?”

Her brothers stop in place and shrug. Kim nods and walks farther out, only stopping when she’s convinced she’s a safe distance away. She thinks about that gameplay she watched, and her eyes go blue. She feels her clothes flutter around her, the sheer power lifting her feet off the ground and high into the air. Her head cracks back and she tries it out. 

Streaks of blue light crack from up above her, and blast outwards in a dome shape. They crash into the sand around her, kicking up enough debris for a quick sandstorm.  Kim’s body strains. She gets queasy, too much pressure building.

So Kim imagines, she imagines a phantom Ron skirting the outskirts of her dome, trying to escape. She tightens her jaw and focuses back on where all the pinpricks of light meet, and releases. Little white discs fly out from the core, trailing just behind Ron, striking the sand, kicking it up into a mess. 

Kim tightens her fist, feels her knuckles pull, and speeds up the onslaught. More energy blasts and at some point, even though it’s just a phantom, her stomach tightens into a knot when she feels herself make contact. She imagines hitting him with the power over and over again, and then the blue light fades and elegantly, she drops back down to the ground. 

Kim narrows her eyes, imagining the phantom Ron, and slashes at the air with her right hand. A fast streak of blue cuts through the air and the Lotus Blade retracts from the blue light and lands in her hand. Kim focuses more, and the blade splits in two, its twin landing into her left hand. 

Kim runs forward, or rather, glides forward. The blades carve a path beneath her, emitting continuous blue sparks just like Roxas and she brings both blades down on the Ron, striking it against the ground. Another spark and much of what she was wielding fades, as does the Lotus Blades. 

Kim rises from her crouch warily, and looks to her brothers. They’re absolutely stunned, nearly slack jawed at her from the shock. She smiles and pushes her hair back, walking towards them slowly. “Did that look cool?”

“Yeah,” Jim says fast. “Wait — whoa, uh, Kim, we knew you had powers now but…”

“...whoa,” Tim just sighs, all spacey. 

Jim gives him a cross look, their whole bit is they finish each other’s sentences, but when he looks back to Kim it looks like he forgot what he wanted to say. 

Kim smiles and reaches through reality, into these little pockets of blue that appear around her hands, and they return with a PS2 controller in hand. She lobs it across the field and Jim catches it. Instantaneously, a phantom Ron appears directly before him, a thin blue line like a cable going from its back to the controller.

“What,” Jim gasps. “Kim, what are you — ”

“I need a release every few days, the power builds up, you know?” Kim sighs, slinging one of the Lotus Blades over her shoulder. “C’mon, try to beat me. I’m Roxas.”

When nothing happens, Kim checks back in on her brothers with a raised eyebrow. “I’m serious. Try me.”

“D-does it—” Jim stutters, tentatively clicking the X button and phantom Ron slashes at the air just like Sora would. “—whoa, what. Yo, Kim. You’re like… really powerful.”

Kim forces a smile. “I know. I kinda hate it, so kick my ass. Please.”

* * *

Kim’s parents take it okay. They understand why she has to go, they do make her swear to weekly Skype dates at least. And that’s fine, Kim wants to keep these people in her life anyways. 

“I appreciate what you are doing, coming here to tell me about Chris G but I don’t want to decide right now.”

Now for this piece of work.

**Suburbia: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 24, 2008: 3:12PM**

Kim takes in a deep breath; election day is coming up really soon. If she wanted, she could press him for urgency. He needs to decide _now_ — else more canvassers and phone bankers will waste their time on him. But an urgency angle isn’t very inspiring.

Kim wants to go wild and speak from the heart, but she’s tired and she has so many more cold doors to cover today. If she goes all in on reverse engineering this one person, she’ll be out of energy. She needs to keep this sustainable.

So start off by acknowledging the heart of what he just said.

“I know you want to do more research and decide later — ” Kim says. 

Good. Perfect. Feels right. Now lay down that common ground.

“ — but don’t you think we’ve all spent too much time hemming and hawing over things that actually matter?”

Harsh, but the dude seems to understand. He’s listening now, interested in what she has to say.

“Chris G is a teacher,” Kim says. “She just was a teacher, in public schools. She probably had to buy her own supplies for classes, she knows what it’s like to be  _ us _ . We need someone like that in higher power.”

Now ask him again. Will you vote for Chris G.

“If you say no, I’ll keep knocking on doors,” Kim says. “But it’d make it a lot easier if you said yes right now.”

The guy hesitates. He’s thinking about it, and then finally he sighs, “I still need to do more research.”

Dammit. Kim clenches her jaw. She needs to remember — this is normal. This is why she’s here. If everyone said Yes right off the bat, she wouldn’t have a job. So focus, trust the process. Acknowledgement, Common Ground, Power Fact, Strong Ask.

“I hear that you really want to do more research,” Kim tries to sound strong. “But the numbers are there, we know who these people are. Chris G has been so consistent — I mean…” She thinks for a second. Connect the common ground to the correct powerfact. What matches? Oh! She’s got it. “...in 2006, she was the only one on the Clark County Commission to vote No for building a stadium for the Oakland Raiders with public money. She lost that vote, but she made it clear back then, and she’s made it clear now, that she puts people first over profit. So help her help you and everyone else.”

This time there’s almost a staring contest between the two. 

“I…” the guy sucks on his teeth. Please don’t say  _ I need to do more research _ , please don’t say  _ I need to do more research _ … “...just don’t want to commit to anything right now.”

Kim winces; that one stings but she needs to remember what Hank has told her: “ _ If they say anything new between pushback, that means it’s working. Try again.” _

Kim has no idea what she is going to say, but she can’t lapse here or the momentum will die. So she talks.

“I get it, I get not wanting to make a decision, it sucks, especially when it’s a stranger asking you to do it. But I also know that you get this is important now, and I don’t think you got it before I walked up to your door. We are all responsible for making the right choice here. And she’s here to pass common sense gun reform. She’s here to do the shit we know matters. Maybe you don’t 100% agree with her on everything, if you did… that’d be super weird. But you know enough now that you can say Yes. So say it. Give her your vote.”

He hesitates one last time, and sighs again. But his voice sounds warmer right now. He looks up with bright eyes and says, “Alright, I’m in.”

Fuck yeah.

Kim almost texts Hank to let him know she finally signed someone up with the actual process for once — but she doesn’t need his validation today. The Yes vote is enough. Now she just needs to replicate that about twenty more times… and she’s down for it. 

Kim stomps on pavement and pounds on doors. She trusts the process, and she ends her final day at her canvassing office with the most votes out of anyone. 

* * *

It’s so awkward when Yori visits. Last time this happened, it was Christmas and Kim was crashing on her parents’ couch. Kim brought Yori up to her room where Yori, possessed by Sensei, then tried to kill her. This time, Kim takes a moment to let her parents know that Yori’s cool and not to worry.

“What was that about?” Yori asks after Kim pulls her up the stairs.

“Last time they saw you, you tried to kill me,” Kim whispers.

“Oh, yeah, right I forgot about that.”

**Kim’s Parents House: Las Vegas, Nevada** **  
** **October 25, 2008: 11:39AM**

Kim leans against her bed and looks at Yori longingly. It’s really nice seeing her again, but she was expecting Nong Man and not her. Which Kim is sure is intentional. Nong Man will definitely bring Kim back; he’s so fucking bored. But Yori?

“So,” Kim starts.

Yori nods. “So.” She flops besides Kim, their hips brushing together. Last time, Yori climbed behind Kim and massaged her shoulders. Kim could use that again, but she’s sure it would bring about painful memories for Yori. 

Kim squeezes Yori’s hand. 

“Are you sure you’re ready?” Yori asks. “I know that… you care a lot about environmental work, about climate change. But you shouldn’t feel like you need to rush back into it.”

Kim gives Yori the eye. “It’s been nearly four months.”

“I know.”

Kim sighs. “I’m as good as I’ll ever be. I’m at like 90%, and I want to win this. I want it to end. Our enemies are weak right now, Yori. Hench is nearly kaput, Betty’s dead…” She bites her lip. Yori and the others know Kim killed Betty, just not  _ how _ she managed that. And how brutal it was.

Kim clenches her fist. “I’m the strongest person in the world. Nong Man told you about how I need to like  — blow up every now and then, right? Just to stay sane?”

“He did,” Yori pats Kim’s knee. “Why do you even have his powers?”

“I dunno,” Kim shrugs. “Sensei stopped by recently to go off on me about it, but I think I’m safe. I’m stronger than even him… a-and we have heart, you know?”

Yori raises her eyebrows, but then nods. “Yeah, we do. Thanks to you.”

Kim smiles. At least she’s had some kind of positive impact. “We believe in something. I… I want to go back to what we were doing before Wonderland. I want to do climate work. Fuck Global Justice, fuck Hench, they don’t matter. We can still  _ work _ .”

Yori takes Kim’s shoulder now. It’s like she’s sampling the best parts of Kim to grab when trying to talk sense to her. “It’s not going to be easy. Even with all the power in the world, I mean, Ron just flat-out  _ failed _ , you know?”

“I know,” Kim shrugs Yori off. She feels bad about it. She doesn’t want to be mean to her friend. But she also doesn’t want to think about what might happen again. “We’re smaller than them, we have less money, and… it’ll be hard. But we need to do this. There are people we don’t see right now who need us to do this work.”

Yori bites her lip and looks away. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, I can tell that you’re… happier, it’s just…” She glances back. She’s afraid of something.

“What?” Kim rasps.

“It feels like everything has been flipped on its head and the people in power, Kim… they blame  _ you _ . They want you dead.”

“So? That’s not new for me…”

“You’ll have to kill them,” Yori talks fast. “You won’t be able to use peace… if there’s a drilling platform, you’ll blow it up. You’ll kill illegal loggers, you’ll… you’re like a God, Kim. You’ll want to use peace, but they won’t let you. They’ll leave you with no other choice.”

Kim blinks. “I’ve… I’ve killed before.”

“I know,” Yori urges. “But… I’m scared for what this will do to you.”

Kim steadies her gaze. She’s kind of scared for that too; she saw what this did to Ron. He deteriorated so quickly. 

“This is war, Kim,” Yori says.

Kim nods. “I think that’s why these powers came to me. We need this, and we’re going to win.”

Kim snaps her fingers and blue flames light up above her knuckle. She reaches up and grabs it, putting the flames out immediately. Her fist strikes her knee. 

She says, “I’ll make sure of it.”


End file.
